Internet

The Internet, a global computer network which embraces millions of users all over the world, began in the United States in 1969 as a military experiment. It was designed to survive a nuclear war. Information sent over the Internet takes the shortest path available from one com­puter to another. Because of this, any two computers on the Internet will be able to stay in touch with each other as long as there is a single route between them. This technology is called packet swithing. Owing to this technology, if some computers on the network are knocked out (by a nuclear explosion, for example), information will just route around them. One such packet-swithing network already survived a war. It was the Iraqi computer network which was not knocked out during the Gulf War.

Most of the Internet host computers (more than 50 %) are in the United States, while the rest are located in more than 100 other countries. Although the number of host computers can be counted fairly accurately, nobody knows exactly how many people use the Internet, here are millions, and their number is growing by thousands each month worldwide.

The most popular Internet service is e-mail. Most of the people, who have access to the Internet, use the network only for sending and receiving e-mail messages. However, other popular services are avail­able on the Internet: reading USENET News, using the World-Wide Web, telnet, FTP, and Gopher.

However, some problems remain. The most important is security. When you send an e-mail message to somebody, this message can travel through many different networks and computers. The data is constantly being directed towards its destination by special computers called routers. Because of this, it is possible to get into any of computers along the route, intercept and even change the data being sent over the Internet. In spite of the fact that there are many strong encoding programs available, nearly all the information being sent over the Internet is transmitted without any form of encoding, i.e. “in the clear”. But when it becomes necessary to send important information over the network, these encoding programs may be useful. Some American banks and companies even conduct transactions over the Internet. However, there are still both commercial and technical problems which will take time to be resolved.

Computers then and now

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The world's first electronic computer (build) at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, although computer-like machines (build) in the 19th century. Computers (sell) commercially for the first time in the 1950s, and a lot of progress (make) since then. Computers are now much smaller and more powerful, and they (can/buy) much more cheaply.

Computers (use) in many fields – in business, science, medicine and education, for example. They (can/use) to forecast the weather or to control robots which make cars. The computer's memory is the place where information (keep) and calculations (do).

A computer cannot think for itself – it (must/tell) exactly what to do. A lot of difficult calculations (can/ do) very quickly on a computer.

And computers don't make mistakes. Stories (hear) sometimes about computers paying people too much money or sending them bills for things they didn't buy. These mistakes (make) by the programmers – the people who give the computer its instructions. Some years ago, a computer-controlled rocket belonging to the USA went out of control and (have to/destroy). The accident (cause) by a small mistake in one-line of the programme. This mistake cost the USA $18 million.

Criminals have found out that 'computer crimes' are often a lot easier than robbing banks. Hundreds of millions of dollars (steal) from American businesses every year by people changing the information in computers.

Large numbers of home computers (sell) recently, especially in the USA and Britain. People know more about computers than they used to, and computers are playing a bigger part in our lives. Progress (make) all the time. Many people believe we can look forward to the day when even our household jobs like cleaning (do) by computer-controlled robots.